Senate Democrats: Obamacare? What's that?

FILE - This April 16, 2014 file photo shows Sen. Kay Hagan, D-N.C., at an event in Durham, N.C. This year's U.S. Senate campaign in North Carolina and a few other crucial states will determine which party controls the U.S. Senate in the final two years of President Barack Obama's second term. Running for a second term in Washington, Hagan is talking a lot about what's happening at North Carolina's Capitol where her Republican opponent North Carolina House Speaker Thom Tillis is enmeshed in trying to resolve a budget quarrel, a spot that helps Hagan emphasize Tillis’ role leading a Republican-controlled state government Democrats argue has gone overboard with conservative zeal. (AP Photo/Gerry Broome, File)
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FILE - This April 16, 2014 file photo shows Sen. Kay Hagan, D-N.C., at an event in Durham, N.C. This year's U.S. Senate campaign in North Carolina and a few other crucial states will determine which party controls the U.S. Senate in the final two years of President Barack Obama's second term. Running for a second term in Washington, Hagan is talking a lot about what's happening at North Carolina's Capitol where her Republican opponent North Carolina House Speaker Thom Tillis is enmeshed in trying to resolve a budget quarrel, a spot that helps Hagan emphasize Tillis’ role leading a Republican-controlled state government Democrats argue has gone overboard with conservative zeal. (AP Photo/Gerry Broome, File)

FILE - This May 6, 2014 file photo shows North Carolina House Speaker Thom Tillis greetings supporters at an election night rally in Charlotte, N.C., after winning the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate. This year's U.S. Senate campaign in North Carolina and a few other crucial states will determine which party controls the Senate in the final two years of President Barack Obama's second term. For Republicans like Tillis it’s all about tying Democrats to Obama, especially to his health care law that remains wildly unpopular among conservative voters. (AP Photo/Chuck Burton, File)The Associated Press

FILE - This May 6, 2014 file photo shows North Carolina House Speaker Thom Tillis greetings supporters at an election night rally in Charlotte, N.C., after winning the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate. This year's U.S. Senate campaign in North Carolina and a few other crucial states will determine which party controls the Senate in the final two years of President Barack Obama's second term. For Republicans like Tillis it’s all about tying Democrats to Obama, especially to his health care law that remains wildly unpopular among conservative voters. (AP Photo/Chuck Burton, File)

FILE - This May 14, 2014, file photo shows North Carolina House Speaker and Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate, Thom Tillis, center, greeting lawmakers prior the opening session of the General Assembly in Raleigh, N.C. This year's US Senate campaign in North Carolina and a few other crucial states will determine which party controls the Senate in the final two years of President Barack Obama's second term. For Republicans like Tillis it’s all about tying Democrats to Obama, especially to his health care law that remains wildly unpopular among conservative voters. (AP Photo/File)The Associated Press

FILE - This May 14, 2014, file photo shows North Carolina House Speaker and Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate, Thom Tillis, center, greeting lawmakers prior the opening session of the General Assembly in Raleigh, N.C. This year's US Senate campaign in North Carolina and a few other crucial states will determine which party controls the Senate in the final two years of President Barack Obama's second term. For Republicans like Tillis it’s all about tying Democrats to Obama, especially to his health care law that remains wildly unpopular among conservative voters. (AP Photo/File)

Thom Tillis is stuck at the state capitol trying to resolve a budget quarrel as speaker of the North Carolina House. It's a spot that helps Hagan emphasize Tillis' role leading a Republican-controlled state government that Democrats contend has gone overboard with conservative zeal by restricting access to abortion and the voting booth while cutting corporate taxes and slashing spending on schools.

If Tillis is worried by Hagan's portrayal, he doesn't show it. Drinking coffee this past week from a hand-grenade-shaped mug in his no-frills legislative office, he's got his own message in his campaign to take Hagan's Senate seat. "Obamacare," he said, "continues to be a big problem."

Similar themes are playing out in other crucial Senate races, as voters have four months to decide which party will control the chamber in the final two years of Barack Obama's presidency. For Republicans, it's all about tying Democrats to Obama — especially to a health care law that remains unpopular with many Americans. And for Democrats, the election is about just about anything else, especially if they can steer attention away from Washington and federal matters.

It's a political strategy that sometimes gives the campaigns an inside-out feel, with veteran senators running as if they were first-timers without a Washington resume to defend or tout.

Democrat Mark Pryor has represented Arkansas in the Senate for two terms, yet one of his TV ads begins with a man saying, "I remember when Pryor was attorney general." A woman adds that he pursued "scam artists that were ripping off seniors."

Pryor was state attorney general more than a decade ago, and for just four years, compared to his nearly dozen in the Senate. His harkening back to that time points to his desire to make the election a choice between a famous name in Arkansas state politics and first-term Rep. Tom Cotton, a Republican whom many view as less personable and engaging than Pryor.

The GOP strategy, in return, is straightforward. One TV ad has a young girl spelling Pryor's name as O-B-A-M-A.

Traditionally emphasized by first-time campaigners, personal biographies are central to several other Democrats' re-election campaigns. Alaska Sen. Mark Begich has aired a TV ad with footage of him as a boy of about 10, when his father, Rep. Nick Begich, died in a plane crash. "Mark is clearly his father's son," says the narrator, Begich's wife, Deborah Bonito.

And after 18 years in the Senate, Democrat Mary Landrieu is arguably the most accomplished member of her famous Louisiana political family. Still, she has aired an ad in which her father — former New Orleans Mayor Moon Landrieu — says affectionately: "When you have nine children, you're bound to have one who's hard-headed."

Some Democrats might say the same about the GOP's strategy of bashing "Obamacare" now that the Affordable Care Act is 4 years old. Not Tillis, who says Obama and Hagan exaggerated the extent to which people could keep their doctors and insurance plans. He calls it "the greatest example of a promise not kept."